I tested the waters yesterday and today they closed over my head. I struggled in German class to cover the Perfect and Imperfect tenses, Dative and Accusative cases and build vocabulary, which, in a class conducted all in German, is quite a feat. The teacher is a master at it, though - he HAS to be, given how many nationalities he works with. Speaking of nationalities, a lot of our exercises are done among our tablemates - usually 3-4 students per table - which is a fine scheme for interactive learning, most of the time. There's a lovely young Japanese woman at the table I sit at the most, and a young Italian woman one table over, and as interesting as this is in a cultural context, it makes for some difficulties during role-playing exercises, for example, or drilling lists of verbs. Take the verb fliessen. It is conjugated with the verb sein, and progresses like this: fliessen, floss, ist geflossen. Doing drills, we get from the Japanese woman, "friessen, fross, ist gefrossen." From the Italian, we get "fliesseneh, flosseh, isteh geflosseneh." It confuses me to be listening to a foreign language and adding other foreign accents to it.
After being completely overwhelmed all morning I came back to Hannah's in tears. It was hot and humid and I am additionally befuddled by apartment hunting. So I took a nap. Then I took Maggie on the S-Bahn one stop over the river to Treptower Park where we walked for an hour and a half. Hannah and I made salads for dinner and then some friends of hers came over to clean out some books they had been storing here; they stayed to chat and I didn't even start my homework until after 10 p.m.
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